Bryant and Lucy Emily Finch Medlin were married on August 19, 1845 and had six children by 1861, though two had passed away by the time Bryant dedicated this album to his wife. Medlin served as a Methodist minister, bringing his religion around western Tennessee and down into Mississippi. Records in the mid-late 1800s show that he may have been married three times, though it is hard to say with any certainty as there were other men in his family with the same name. The 1860 Federal Census Slave Schedules lists Medlin as an enslaver of one person, a thirteen-year-old girl.

Autograph albums first came into use in the sixteenth century in what is now Germany. They were popular through the Victorian Era, though after the Civil War began to fall out of fashion, and eventually were mainly used by teenagers, though yearbooks also chipped away at their popularity. Autographs were sought from family and friends, as well as celebrities, politicians, and other famous persons. The publisher of this blank book, Leavitt & Allen, was in business in New York City from 1852 to 1862, when it failed during the financial panic of the Civil War.